Dear Synapse Network,
We hope that you are all staying safe and are slowly adapting to the ‘new normal’ that 2020 has delivered.
Like everyone, it has been a busy and challenging few months for us as we have adjusted to working from home in three countries. But our brilliant global team did not miss a beat, a deadline, or a deliverable, transitioning seamlessly, while remaining connected always via Teams and Zoom. In fact, in some ways, our new normal is better than before, with reduced staff commutes leading to productivity gains, increased efficiencies and overall improved team happiness! It has been a very interesting and ultimately rewarding journey on so many levels as we have reassessed the way we work and what our real, ongoing infrastructure needs are.
In amongst the operational changes, we have been busy contributing to the Covid Medicare telehealth discourse via numerous publications and initiatives, have launched a special Covid billing package, participated in numerous telehealth webinars, expanded AIMAC, our automated clinical coding product Aircoder is garnering global attention and a new MBS Answers website is now live.
Read on…
In this issue
 Covid billing package just 1% of receipts |  MBS Answers website now live |  AIMAC sales – prices slashed! |  Aircoder – it's the Google of clinical coding! |
Read on for these articles and more…
Margaret Faux on health reform and the telehealth debate
As she approaches the end of an 8-year PhD on Medicare claiming and compliance, our CEO continues to be a prolific contributor to the health reform and telehealth debate.
Here are links to her latest publications:
- Telehealth is not quite the colt from old Regret but it sure as hell has got away.
- Wading through Molasses – A qualitative examination of the experiences, perceptions, attitudes and knowledge of medical practitioners regarding medical billing
- Billing in Byzantium
- Is forcing GPs to Bulk Bill the MBS Covid items legal?
- Frenetic law making during Covid-19. The impact on doctors, patients and the Medicare system
Covid billing package just 1% of receipts
To help GPs who were thrown into a new way of working overnight, with no access to their practice software and therefore no way of billing, we introduced a Covid billing package to help. We quickly loaded our Synapps MBS app with the new Covid item numbers and GPs and Allied Health professionals could immediately start billing from their phones with straight through processing to Medicare and no fuss.
We were delighted to partner with leading virtual GP clinic Phenix Health to provide their GPs with a complete mobile billing solution during the COVID-19 pandemic and at just 1% of receipts including full service and support, it was hard to beat!
The Covid package is still available and claims can be back dated to March when the new services were introduced, so please get in touch if you or someone you know could benefit from this package.
MBS Answers website is live with answers to questions on any aspect of Australian medical billing
MBS (Medical Billing System) Answers was born out of the Covid-19 Pandemic.
The Covid billing blog that we commenced in March took off and before we knew it, our CEO was sitting up late every night answering good questions from genuinely confused providers (not just doctors) who wanted to bill correctly but were really struggling to know how. The questions kept coming, are still coming, and the blog has now been posted over 50 times, answering nearly 250 questions, and subscriber numbers are through the roof.
So now, for the first time in Australian history, providers can continue to ask medical billing questions (no matter how basic, naive or crazy) and the answers (written by a practising solicitor specialised in the field) will be posted anonymously and shared publicly so everyone can benefit and improve their billing literacy.
The MBS answers website is the website of a law firm and as such, the answers are necessarily more formal in style than the Covid blog, though clarity and brevity have been retained as much as possible. And it’s completely free.
Twenty questions have been posted with another thirty or so in the queue. So, jump online have a look and please feel free to submit a question.
Take me to the MBS Answers website
AIMAC sales
And while you’re visiting MBS Answers click on the links to our many short online AIMAC courses. We’ve slashed the prices of all courses during the pandemic when online learning has increased in importance.
Many thanks also to everyone who purchased courses in May, which was a record month for AIMAC sales. Here’s what one learner had to say:
I wish the AIMAC courses had existed when I had started consultant practice – and now that they do, I think they should be compulsory for everyone! Dr Wojt Janowski
There will be more offers in the months to come and we are always ready to answer your questions.
Margaret has been out and virtually, socially distanced, about, participating in numerous webinars
Telehealth webinars
Get in touch if your specialist college or department would like to arrange a telehealth or billing webinar at no cost.
Aircoder – it’s the Google of clinical coding!
Really, we are not exaggerating. Aircoder works exactly like Google where you can enter anything into the search box and it will return exactly what you want, as if by magic!
We are very proud to report that our AI driven, automated clinical coding platform, Aircoder, is garnering a lot of international attention and opportunities in many countries. Covid has brought into sharp relief the need to digitise old fashioned, expensive, lazy approaches to medical administration and heightened the need for automated billing and coding, so that more health dollars are directed to front line clinical services rather than back office administration.
For Australian providers, imagine this…
- Doctors bill using their phones as they roam around the hospital, with patient details auto populating their apps in real time so they just select patient, select item/s and send;
- Claims continue straight through to Medicare and the health funds via ECLIPSE, and payments are auto receipted with no human touch points;
- When a patient is discharged the complete episode is automatically coded to ICD/ACHI in a nanosecond;
- The ICD/ACHI codes are auto dropped into the hospital bill, which has been auto created and the whole thing goes off to the health fund, comes back and is auto receipted with no human touchpoints anywhere along that journey, and
- It’s all on one integrated platform with dashboards and reports galore.
Think that’s impossible? Well, think again. It is just around the corner so watch this space.
Like Google, Aircoder keeps getting smarter and more accurate the more data we feed it, so if your facility is interested in modernising coding and billing, ridding itself of paper and expensive, inefficient, outdated processes, please get in touch. We would love to give you a demo of Aircoder and show you how it and our Synapps MBS billing platform are being integrated.
That brings us to the end of this update.
So, stay well, safe, be kind to each other, and thank you for your ongoing loyalty, engagement and support.
Margaret and the Synapse Team
